MP 7,1 My thoughts on the 7,1

[Onelifenofear]

No, I will not move on FFS. You're making statements which I expect you to support with facts.

I will then:
2 complete control Panel UIs - Metro&Classic - Which are impossible to find anything.
Massive reluctance to move to 64Bit completely
Terrible font handling
Terrible font rendering
Inconsistant UI across the board
Massively obsolete parts harking back to 2000
The clusterfudge that is the windows registry... if it borks you cannot recover.
Cryptic and confounding error messages.
Nodal Pop up everywhere ( that get hidden behind windows and you cannot carry on till you find it )
Terrible video codec handling.
Non Existant file preview handling ( No thumbnails for stuff )
File explorer from windows 95.
Driver hell. ( more an issue with the hardware manufaturerers - tried working out what the hell you are suppoed to install for a Gigabyte x370 Extreme Gold Platinum Designaire Plus+ infinite edition pro plus or whatever. One files? Nope you have to go find 50 and install them all separately or possibly use some installer that stealth installer loads of crapware.
Insane Icons insanity in apps... which they kinda fixed with with Metro then complete forgot about.
Bumfware ( 3d paint thing - massive waste of space... can't delete it )
Keyboard shortcuts are non existence and/or not changeable

On the plus side it's nice and open for developers... oh hold on... and Virus makers.

Point is if they actually had the balls to start from scratch they could create something modern and great. but they won't because the enterprise customers that are still on ( I **** you not ) NT or (I **** you hotter) XP and they wrote some package printing programme in 2002 and they'll freak if they have to up date it cos Bob the IT guy retired and moved to Florida.
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LOL

There is a sign in our editing room for the window's pcs.
If you update windows during editing of an active project ~
You're fired!

There is one on a PC in a studio I freelance at.... it's basically...
You have to have Admin rights to Marvin (computer name) because windows is crap....BUT
NEVER UPDATE THIS POS.
DO NOT CHANGE A F**KING THING IN THE CONROL PANEL
DO NOT CREATE A NEW USER
SUFFER IT UNTIL APPLE GET THEIR **** TOGETHER.


They now have 12 new Mac pros ( about 12k specs ) and I still have the use the fecking PC.

 

[WShawn]

Can you expand upon how it plummets?

"Plummets" is probably an exaggeration. Let's say "diminishes."

I was going to make a list of ten-or-so things that bug me about Windows, but I don't want to bore you. I'm not going to try to change anybody's minds. If a less-expensive, more-powerful PC workstation running Windows 10 works great for you, awesome. I don't hate Windows, I just prefer OS X and operate more efficiently in that OS. I'm constantly jumping between C4D and After Effects and Premiere Pro and Preview and Mac Mail and Messages, and that all works smoothly for me on my 2012 Mac Pro.

I'm old. 58-years-old. I've been using a Mac since the early 90s, and it's simply what I'm used to. With enough time and various third-party modifications to the OS I'd probably "get used" to Windows, but fortunately our little business is successful enough that I can afford to buy a system that does what I need it to do on an OS in which I operate most efficiently (for the most part; believe me, there's plenty I DON'T like about Apple.)

Cheers.

Shawn Marshall
Portland, OR

EDIT: It looks like Onelifenofear made his own list while I was typing this, much of which I agree with. My biggest gripe is that I have not found a way to list ALL files AND folders sorted by date in descending order. 90% of the time when I'm looking for a scene or project file I sort by date and the most recent iteration is at the top of the list n OSX. In Windows it sorts all of the individual files and THEN the folders, and that means endless scrolling for me to get to the item I want. If someone knows of a hack or add-on that will intermingle files AND folders sorted by date in Windows I will send you $10 via PayPal or something.

 

[bagodonuts]

@WShawn- www.xyplorer.com has the ability to interleave files and folders. There isn't a way to replicate Finder's behavior in Explorer as far as I know. Xyplorer has a trial period but it isn't free after 30 days. I assume there are other Windows shell replacements that can do the same thing, maybe one of them is freeware.

I'm in your camp though. As much as Win 10 has improved, I'm just too used to MacOS. For me Time Machine is the feature I haven't been able to live without.

 

[defjam]

"Plummets" is probably an exaggeration. Let's say "diminishes."

This sounds a lot more reasonable.

EDIT: It looks like Onelifenofear made his own list while I was typing this, much of which I agree with. My biggest gripe is that I have not found a way to list ALL files AND folders sorted by date in descending order. 90% of the time when I'm looking for a scene or project file I sort by date and the most recent iteration is at the top of the list n OSX. In Windows it sorts all of the individual files and THEN the folders, and that means endless scrolling for me to get to the item I want. If someone knows of a hack or add-on that will intermingle files AND folders sorted by date in Windows I will send you $10 via PayPal or something.

Let me see if I understand what it is you're trying to accomplish: You're trying to sort the files and folders in a directory whereas the items are listed in descending order (newest to oldest) but you would like the folders to remain at the top of the listing. Is that correct? If so that's easy:

• First sort by "Date Modified"
• Then sort by "Type" by holding down the "Shift" key when performing the sort

After having sorted by type you can then resort by data in either ascending / descending order.

Does that address your biggest gripe?

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Yesterday I was on the phone to Apple sales in Ireland for my small business (as I'm looking to purchase a new Mac Pro), and when I asked about general interest for the machine so far, I was very surprised by the response.

The operator told me that calls directly related to the product had been non-stop; more than 57,000 units had already been ordered and there would be a much longer delay in any custom config.

Frankly this is very surprising, but good news none the less for the Mac community. Just goes to show that self-titled experts around here don't understand the consumer base for this product.

 

[vel0city]

Can anyone comment about the overall snappiness and responsiveness of the system, compared to 4,1 5,1 and 6,1 please? Things like launching common applications, copying files, internet browsing, just day-to-day stuff that we all do. Does the 7,1 feel night and day different from a fully loaded 5,1? Thanks.

 

[WShawn]

This sounds a lot more reasonable.


Let me see if I understand what it is you're trying to accomplish: You're trying to sort the files and folders in a directory whereas the items are listed in descending order (newest to oldest) but you would like the folders to remain at the top of the listing. Is that correct? If so that's easy:

• First sort by "Date Modified"
• Then sort by "Type" by holding down the "Shift" key when performing the sort

After having sorted by type you can then resort by data in either ascending / descending order.

Does that address your biggest gripe?

Thanks for the reply.

It's not that I want either ALL of the folders or ALL of the individual files sorted by date. I want them all intermingled in descending order with the most recently modified file or folder on top. So that could look like:

Folder
Folder
File
Folder
File
File
File
Folder

Again, I suppose that if I spent enough time in Windows I'd learn to organize my files in such a way that this wouldn't bug me so much, but I feel I shouldn't have to alter the way I like to organize my work to accommodate the OS. As noted above, it looks like there might be third-party shells that could do what I want.

Cheers.

 

[defjam]

Thanks for the reply.

It's not that I want either ALL of the folders or ALL of the individual files sorted by date. I want them all intermingled in descending order with the most recently modified file or folder on top. So that could look like:

Folder
Folder
File
Folder
File
File
File
Folder

Again, I suppose that if I spent enough time in Windows I'd learn to organize my files in such a way that this wouldn't bug me so much, but I feel I shouldn't have to alter the way I like to organize my work to accommodate the OS. As noted above, it looks like there might be third-party shells that could do what I want.

Cheers.

This is one thing about macOS that I dislike, I much rather prefer having the files separated from the folders. As such I've never attempted to try and mimic it in Windows.

Having said that I can't see how this would have any measurable impact on productivity and is more a personal preference thing than anything else.

 

[Adult80HD]

Can anyone comment about the overall snappiness and responsiveness of the system, compared to 4,1 5,1 and 6,1 please? Things like launching common applications, copying files, internet browsing, just day-to-day stuff that we all do. Does the 7,1 feel night and day different from a fully loaded 5,1? Thanks.

I can't compare mine to a 5,1 as I didn't have one, but my 7,1 is very snappy. It is noticeably faster than my brand new totally loaded 16" MBP. Of course, I'd be slightly disappointed if it didn't given the difference in horsepower.

 

[JohnnyGo]

I can't compare mine to a 5,1 as I didn't have one, but my 7,1 is very snappy. It is noticeably faster than my brand new totally loaded 16" MBP. Of course, I'd be slightly disappointed if it didn't given the difference in horsepower.

The more I read or hear/watch users reactions to actually owning/using their new Mac Pro the more I confirm that Apple hit a home run here. Maybe it’s not where everyone wanted but that’s ok, you can’t please everyone.

Engineering wise it’s a piece of art at the same time that it’s extremely powerful and flexible. Price wise it costs an arm and a leg, but for professionals that expense may be warranted every 5-10 years. For Apple, it’s a sign they want to be aspirational in all levels, from the street corner (Airpods) all the way to a science simulation (Mac Pro). As content becomes ever more important (and expensive/lucrative), content producers will happily pay up for the performance.

 

[Adult80HD]

The more I read or hear/watch users reactions to actually owning/using their new Mac Pro the more I confirm that Apple hit a home run here. Maybe it’s not where everyone wanted but that’s ok, you can’t please everyone.

Engineering wise it’s a piece of art at the same time that it’s extremely powerful and flexible. Price wise it costs an arm and a leg, but for professionals that expense may be warranted every 5-10 years. For Apple, it’s a sign they want to be aspirational in all levels, from the street corner (Airpods) all the way to a science simulation (Mac Pro). As content becomes ever more important (and expensive/lucrative), content producers will happily pay up for the performance.

If you believed all of the AMD-loving naysayers here, it's Apple's death knell. I think you're right, it's a home run for them. I had skipped Apple on the high end since I retired my original Mac Pro in 2012 after 6 years of service. The trashcan totally turned me off and made me think Apple was forgoing the high end to focus purely on aesthetics over expandability and performance. This new Mac Pro brought me back and it sounds like orders are strong.

I have to order Windows based workstations for my business as the one software package we use isn't Mac compatible; if you spend time ordering any of those you'll see that Apple's pricing for a workstation is totally in line with that charged by Dell and HP for similar professional workstations, and yet from an engineering perspective the design and quality of build on my Mac Pro blows away our HP Z workstations.

 

[skippermonkey]

Really good to hear. Are you rendering in C4D? Using Realflow and X-Particles for sims and particles?

As asked above, I, too, would like to know what software you're using that's seeing these performance gains.

Can you post a Cinebench R20 score for your system? Thanks!

I'm rendering natively in C4D, using Standard and Physical renderers. I did renders of scenes bundled with C4D, directly compared with the same scenes on my 2010 12-core 2.93GHz. That's where the three to six x speeds come from.

(For example the Grapes scenes rendered in 1:52 compared to 6:48; the Cheese scene is 21 seconds compared to 1:25, so a good four x in most cases.)

I also have X-Particles, FumeFX and Realflow and the difference is noticeable (24 cores in Realflow is faster than using the RX580X GPU). FumeFX fair rattles along, with all 48 threads full pelt. I also have Storm 3.0, and the difference is night and day; it's actually useable on this machine.

My old system delivered a Cinebench R20 multi-CPU score of 2931, this machine got as high as 9104 – 3.1x faster! No it's not a 64-core Threadripper, but it'll do me for the time being.

 

[WShawn]

I'm rendering natively in C4D, using Standard and Physical renderers. I did renders of scenes bundled with C4D, directly compared with the same scenes on my 2010 12-core 2.93GHz. That's where the three to six x speeds come from.

(For example the Grapes scenes rendered in 1:52 compared to 6:48; the Cheese scene is 21 seconds compared to 1:25, so a good four x in most cases.)

I also have X-Particles, FumeFX and Realflow and the difference is noticeable (24 cores in Realflow is faster than using the RX580X GPU). FumeFX fair rattles along, with all 48 threads full pelt. I also have Storm 3.0, and the difference is night and day; it's actually useable on this machine.

My old system delivered a Cinebench R20 multi-CPU score of 2931, this machine got as high as 9104 – 3.1x faster! No it's not a 64-core Threadripper, but it'll do me for the time being.

Thanks for the specifics. I'm trying to rationalize the additional $4000 cost that would get me the 24-Core CPU. Over five years that amortizes to a bit over $2 a day. I have to decide whether the 30% performance increase over the 16-core CPU is worth it. If it was only $2000 more I probably wouldn't hesitate.

I'd never heard of Fume FX. It looks like it's pretty new for C4D. I don't do much in the way of fluid sims as it's generally really slow and very complex to set up.

Cheers.

 

[Adult80HD]

Thanks for the specifics. I'm trying to rationalize the additional $4000 cost that would get me the 24-Core CPU. Over five years that amortizes to a bit over $2 a day. I have to decide whether the 30% performance increase over the 16-core CPU is worth it. If it was only $2000 more I probably wouldn't hesitate.

I'd never heard of Fume FX. It looks like it's pretty new for C4D. I don't do much in the way of fluid sims as it's generally really slow and very complex to set up.

Cheers.

If your primary use case can use all of those threads, then do the math on how much time it will save you getting 24 cores and it should be an easy decision, assuming the short-term cashflow isn't a problem. If that's the case, do 16 now and I'm sure within a year or two you can upgrade it yourself for a lot less.

 

[skippermonkey]

I'll be honest – If I did this for a living I'd buy a Mac for writing/admin and 2D Imagery/video, but I'd do layout/sims/rendering on a multicore PC. A 64-core PCIe 4.0 Threadripper PC is an instant one-machine render farm.

 

[vel0city]

I'm rendering natively in C4D, using Standard and Physical renderers. I did renders of scenes bundled with C4D, directly compared with the same scenes on my 2010 12-core 2.93GHz. That's where the three to six x speeds come from.

(For example the Grapes scenes rendered in 1:52 compared to 6:48; the Cheese scene is 21 seconds compared to 1:25, so a good four x in most cases.)

I also have X-Particles, FumeFX and Realflow and the difference is noticeable (24 cores in Realflow is faster than using the RX580X GPU). FumeFX fair rattles along, with all 48 threads full pelt. I also have Storm 3.0, and the difference is night and day; it's actually useable on this machine.

My old system delivered a Cinebench R20 multi-CPU score of 2931, this machine got as high as 9104 – 3.1x faster! No it's not a 64-core Threadripper, but it'll do me for the time being.

Thank you for the details, very much appreciated. Is the viewport speed improved with X-Particles? I have this too but hardly ever use it because of the horrible viewport performance on the 5,1.

 

[skippermonkey]

X-Particles is considerbaly quicker across the board. Here's a scene (admittedly simple) with a n emitter and turbulence. 50,000 particles per frame – around the 1,000,000-particle mark things start to slow to around 8fps while generating. But when paused I could still navigate the scene at 15fps, so no problems there...

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And here we are at 3,000,000 particles with Curl turbulence and age-based colour. Generation speed down to 2.4fps, but I can still navigate fairly smoothly at around 7fps. This is with an old RX580 (not even the 580X), and only 32GB RAM. Next week I'll have a 5700XT and 64GB RAM.

I bloody love this Mac!

EDIT: As a matter of interest it took 16 minutes to cache the scene and the file is 79.21GB!

 

[ssgbryan]

I'll be honest – If I did this for a living I'd buy a Mac for writing/admin and 2D Imagery/video, but I'd do layout/sims/rendering on a multicore PC. A 64-core PCIe 4.0 Threadripper PC is an instant one-machine render farm.

That is why I am going with a 3950x - I am retiring my render farm.

 

[zzzachi]

@skippermonkey
could you maybe post your cinemabench r20 single-core score ? (menu -> advanced)
and which model do you own ? the 24core ?

 

[vel0city]

@skippermonkey thank you for the X-Particles test, that is extremely positive! Much appreciated and glad you're enjoying your new Mac Pro!

 

[Blair Paulsen]

I keep imagining a 12c MacPro connected to a Threadripper PC serving as a rendering appliance...

 

[zzzachi]

I keep imagining a 12c MacPro connected to a Threadripper PC serving as a rendering appliance...

i built a 3970x system these days.
i use it next to my mac pro 2012. pc for cinema4d, mac for everything else.
like that i dont have to bother too much with windows .)

 

[skippermonkey]

@skippermonkey
could you maybe post your cinemabench r20 single-core score ? (menu -> advanced)
and which model do you own ? the 24core ?

Yes, it's the 24-core. I'll add the single-core score here when it's stopped rendering.

 

[ssgbryan]

I keep imagining a 12c MacPro connected to a Threadripper PC serving as a rendering appliance...

Right tool for the right job.

 

[vel0city]

I keep imagining a 12c MacPro connected to a Threadripper PC serving as a rendering appliance...

If viewport performance is good and rendering speed is fast on the new Mac Pro, would you even need the PC though? For big rendering jobs would you consider not sending to a cloud render farm like pixel plow? Not a rhetorical question just genuinely want to know what people's workflows and systems are like because we're all in this together and have a shared interest.